


Slay, Shift, Shoulder

by Dragoneisha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Collars, Dominance, Dragons, F/M, Horses, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Multi, Power Dynamics, Transformation, Witches, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 09:29:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19664608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoneisha/pseuds/Dragoneisha
Summary: Roxanne Lalonde and James Egbert live a quiet, domestic life in their little cottage with their horses and their comfortable nest egg.Someonejust happens to come by and ruin it every few months, like an asshole.





	1. Slay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twofoldAxiom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/gifts).



> i know your prompt was literally just "dom bro strider" but you see - you see - i cant do things by half measures and now its like a whole THING
> 
> it WILL happen tho lol

“Good morning, dear,” says the love of her life, and it makes her heart explode all over again.

Roxanne Lalonde rolls over to bury her face in the pillow and giggle to her heart’s content, and considering that heart just ‘sploded something fierce, that sure is an achievement. She can hear James’ chuckles behind her. He sets down whatever silly thing he was carrying and leans over her, whispering that it’s time to get up, he made breakfast.

He always makes breakfast. This isn’t a surprise. 

“Oatmeal and sunshine?”

“Distilled perfectly,” he assures her. She coos in delight. He always says such sweet things, especially about her work. The guy knows how to make a girl feel special! She's lucky to have snapped him up before any other gal in town got grabby. No love potions required.

Been awhile since she's tried to make one of those. They never work.

While she's in the middle of trying to make up her mind on if she's going to pull him in and keep him in bed all morning, he's gotten his thick, strong arms under him and hoisted her up as if she’s a princess. She shouts, just how he likes to make her shout, the goose, and then mocks at throttling him. He just smiles as he carries her. A picture-perfect husband, when he decides to say yes to her.

“You aren't to eat in bed, you get crumbs in the sheets and no amount of your black magic will get _those_ out,” he says, correctly. She pouts anyway.

“But babe-y, I thought you wanted me to be relaxed in the mornings. I'm up so late -”

“You're up so late because you choose to be.” He ribs her, settling Roxanne in the worn, rickety wooden chair he built himself. (It's so rickety because she keeps fucking him in it. Huehuehue.) He’s always right, of course. He just tends to be. James can be relied on like a well-wound watch, and she does her damnedest to break all the gears. Not maliciously. Just because, you know, he's more fun when you can't tell what time it is by what he's doing. Everything’s more fun with less order. Not necessarily chaos - just less order.

She never thought she'd fall for a man so orderly. And so firmly on the _righteous_ side of things.

Kinda sexy.

Nah, that's not fair. He's really sexy. She isn't supposed to undersell him.

James gives her a kiss, and then her breakfast. “Eat,” he says, and he is so sweet she's willing to let it slide that he’s demanding she do things. She was going to eat anyway.

James was always the cook. Roxanne prefers the more delicate work in her laboratory - her pet name for their basement. She could cook, but why ruin a good thing?

The oatmeal is delicious. Not at all stodgy. It's not quite as good as some of the other things he makes, but this is cheap and effective, and James hates opulence. Her spoon clinks against the bottom of the bowl quickly, unmuffled by oats.

The sun illuminates them both through the window. She pats James’ cheek, in a quiet thanks.

“Any plans for the day?” She asks, with just a hint of giggle.

“The garden needs work,” he says, simple. “The roof needs to be retarred.”

“The counters could be tidier.”

“We need new chairs.”

“Which, of course, you won't buy.”

“If I can make it just as well, why waste money?”

“It's not like we have a shortage,” Roxanne laughs. “I'm rivaling kings in currency!”

She is. They both are - for the good work they do, they are compensated, even though they don't have all that much use for it. An emperor, even, would bow to them, for all the good they do and have.

And he'd be right to, because Roxanne hates emperors.

“Do you wanna know _my_ plan?” She whispers, and he leans over as she puts aside the bowl. 

“Do tell,” murmurs he, as she pulls him over her, her slim hands catching his strong ones. Their lips meet.

She's a shoddy kisser, smiling like she is, but she doesn't stop kissing him anyway. James is really used to settling anyway - hell, he ended up with her, didn't he?

His hand wanders down her arm, to her side, her hip. She hitches herself up a little to press against him, and they both hum.

He breaks the kiss.

“My dearest,” murmurs James.

“And mine,” she giggles, unable to keep herself stern.

The door is thrown open, and Roxanne has a moment to be annoyed before she recognizes the culprit as one of the Watchmen, looking harried and burned along one side of his face. 

Roxanne damn near punts James off her, on her feet in moments. James catches himself, because he was on his way to standing too, both of them reacting instantly. Whatever this is, it's a problem.

Roxanne blinks, twice, and recognizes the insignia of the End of Days. The seriousness of the situation sets upon her shoulders, the mantle of responsibility - the one this man is about to give her - clasping itself around her. She would choke from it if James did not steady her with a hand.

“The Prince is awake,” he gasps, soot on his teeth. Roxanne looks to James, and James to her. 

Their shit is wrecked.


	2. Slayer

They ride.

The brush whips at their heels,their horses jolting with each hoofbeat. They do the best they can, but the beasts are tired. They’d just ridden yesterday. They weren’t _ready_.

He doesn’t care if they’re ready, James thinks bitterly. He is the Prince. The Prince does as he pleases, and it pleases him more to deal with those that cannot stop him.

If he wanted that, he should have gone somewhere else.

“Close,” Roxanne gasps beside him. Their horses ride together so close their knees could brush. They don’t. “Close, but not fast enough, he’s already to town.”

“He isn’t,” James says like a promise. “He isn’t. We’d hear it.”

“He’s there, but he hasn’t started.”

That’s better. James knows that. It’s better that he hasn’t started killing yet, but somehow, it makes him feel worse.

The sun is peeking over the trees, rays of light shooting through branches to wrap around Roxanne’s shoulders. He thinks he's seeing things, for a moment, before he realizes the sunbeams are actually getting caught on her arms as she rides through them, full-tilt through the brush that seems to open up around them. 

There are benefits, he thinks, as they make a half a day’s ride in twenty minutes, to loving a witch.

The town is not burning. It isn't yet, but it will be soon, James knows. The people flee, some of them barely past the flanks of James’ horse, missed by luck and inches. To her credit, Joplin keeps her cool, only a few scattered nickers braking out between her pants and hoofbeats. The people are too close. They flow around them just like the foliage has, one small child knocked aside by Maplehoof’s massive, strong shoulders. 

Roxanne looks back, but they can't stop.

They don't have time.

The town bursts into view as the trees clear, and James pulls his horse’s reins to stop her. She's quick to stop, but nearly bucks him, her eyes wild. She's scared, too. And it doesn't take much to figure out why.

What the people of Haventon run from rears up in the middle of the town square, a giant, glowing thing, shining against the setting sun with its great, leathery wings spread wide.

The Prince, Ambrosia the Bloody, the Great Dragon of Derse, silhouettes himself against the sun, his golden scales reflecting only the barest hint of light in his new position. His amber eyes glow with malice and a sick kind of delight, dark sclera and slitted iris, and his many jutting horns curve back from his great head. He curls his claws, their wicked edges catching light, but as he always does, he does not open his mouth to roar. He is silent as he parts his jaws, and the only sound is the crackling bloom of dragonfire.

He is a sleek, silent thing. Made to come from the sun and strike like a falcon, breaking necks and snatching up livestock. He would not use fire if he were hunting for food.

He is here to have fun.

James grits his teeth and throws himself off his horse, slamming his eye shield down so that his helm covers the whole of his face. The fire will spread quickly. They don't have time to waste.

No matter how many times they fight the Prince, win or lose, it always starts the same. He notices them, turns his head, and gives them a wicked, draconic wink.

“Stop fucking doin’ that!” Roxanne screams, and if dragons could laugh, maybe he would.

The Prince pivots on one of his back legs, his tail extended as a counterweight, and drops to all fours. His wing narrowly misses a tiny inn. However, after a moment, he snaps the round, hard joint at its bend to knock the place over like a stack of cards.

He doesn't usually use such crass language, but James is of the opinion that the Prince is a huge bastard.

The dragon lunges, so fast he's almost invisible, and James draws his sword in a motion nearly as fast. He’s already moving, bringing it up blade-first to catch the curved claws that snap out at him, that deadly blur of silver and gold. 

He goes flying, end over end, and hits a tree hard. That's why he has armor, he thinks to himself, and then scrambles out of the way as the Prince heaves a gout of golden-green fire in his direction. His armor is fireproofed. He'd be crazy to have flammable armor. Roxanne’s magics are thrumming in its inner lining, another layer of protection from the monster he battles, but even the pulse of magic against his chest doesn't make it less terrifying to dodge dragonfire.

They say dragonfire is the soul of the beast, set alight and destroyed in order to facilitate more destruction.

James doesn't care what they say, as they're generally just wrong. But it does burn different - it sticks to you, like if fire and glue bonded themselves together, and chars down to bone. Whatever unkind god thought of dragonfire, James would like to talk.

That in mind, James moves before the Prince can come after him again. He needs to keep his attention - Roxanne has a lot of protection layered over her too, but you can be immune to lots of things. Fire, dragonfire, crushing, stabbing, slashing.

There is no way to become immune to dragons.

James would rather the Prince not focus on the less armored one, so he whistles, and Joplin, good thing that she is, canters past him. He grabs her saddle and pulls himself onto her back, sword drawn. He could use a lance. It's traditional. But he doesn't figure a lance is for him - neither is a sword, really, but you make do with what you have when fighting a monster the size of a castle.

The Prince swings his head to the side, his glowing eye fixing on James. Joplin tosses her head, nearly tosses James, too, but he tightens his knees on the horse and steers her to the side of the Prince.

Under the sinuous curve of his neck, he can just see Roxanne, unstrapping the weapon from her saddle. Good. 

The Prince snaps at him, tail taking out half a street, but James ducks his jaws by a hair and raises the sword to whack into the strut of one of his wings like he’s chopping wood. Joplin’s gait makes it much easier, her speed adding strength to the blow, but the dragon only rattles his spines in annoyance. His scales are thick, even on his wings. It barely got through.

But it got through.

As Joplin gallops under the Prince’s outstretched wing, James lays flat to her back, watching the rippling hide of the dragon flash by. He's turning, quick as lightning, to go after him again. 

The speed of the Prince makes it hard to fight him. That and everything else about him, like being a dragon and having better armor than an entire platoon. He's smart, too, but he has a few vulnerabilities - the soft inside of his mouth, his underwings, and his hyperfixation on trying to eat James.

He sways his head as he turns, like a viper readying to strike, but his whole body is coiled like a spring, his forked tongue sliding between two teeth, the broad side of his wings pressed to the ground to add more leverage to his lunge, his back legs taut with muscle and excitement. He lives for this - just like Roxanne and James do, though they would never admit to it. The beast brings death and misery wherever he goes, lighting towns and roasting armies, but fighting him is something else. They've battled drakes and basilisks, gorgons and mad unicorns, even sirens, who nearly took Roxanne from him. Only the Prince has remained their foe for so long.

There is nothing like him.

James jumps off Joplin, and, quick as anything, the Prince lunges after her. He snaps at her withers, only to skid, confused, once he sees that James isn’t on her anymore. Roxanne whoops, and his attention goes to her. 

James doesn't waste time - _they still don't have any -_ as he rushes the flank of the great beast, tilting his sword just so to pry itself under his pointed scales. The strike is true. The sword scrapes scale as it punctures flesh, hot blood splattering James’ front, and he hears the Prince roar in pain and anger. 

Getting a noise out of him really is something.

James uses the now extremely stuck sword as leverage, pulling himself up and finding handholds in the divots of the dragon’s scuted scales. He climbs quickly, motivated by fear and determination.

If the Prince spots him when he turns around, he’s dead. He has to get up past his side, to the other side of his wing.

He manages to scrabble up behind the membrane and flattens himself against the thick armor between Ambrosia’s various spines. Dragons have a rubbish sense of touch - unless you get to the underside of their claw, their thin wings, or one of the few soft, scaleless spots, one misplaced weight or another may not be noticed. Especially because the Prince hyperfixates like a fae-child.

He hopes it’ll pay off. 

Because if it doesn’t, he’s going to die.


	3. Slain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, my friend, twofoldAxiom
> 
> this chapter ends the overelaborate setup, and begins where your prompt actually comes into play. :3c

A fight is like a show.

It's like a lot of things. He's quite fond of metaphors, Ambrosia is, but he'll stick with a show for now. Because he is, undoubtedly, showing off.

The two humans - a knight and a witch, but neither are exactly that - are the only interesting thing to happen in this country for decades. The man holds nothing but strength in his palms, and the woman can coax anything to happen if you give her the right ingredients and enough time. Both are incredibly talented. Quite interesting.

He thinks he'd like to kill them.

It's not like this little farce can end any other way. Eventually, one side will fall. He doesn't delude himself with thinking that they'll spare him, someday, if he gives them an opening. No, he's seen the dragonlance the man hefts. If he lets down his guard for a second, that monstrosity is plunging through his chest and out betwixt his ribs, just another spike in the carpet of spines coating his body. 

Ambrosia - Bro, as he prefers - would rather avoid death, so eventually he'll have to kill these two. Shame as it'll be. They're a lot of fun.

However, if he gets another hit down to the ribs, he's going to start biting off some heads.

Bro finally manages to hook his fang under the hilt of the sword plunged into his side, and he twists his head with a low huff, the blade sliding out of his flesh with a truly unpleasant suction. He hasn't taken a hit like that from a sword his whole life. These two are geniuses.

Bro is smarter, of course. But they're smart for sure.

Smart and sneaky. After that strike, Egbert has disappeared into the fuckin’ aether, which Bro is more than a little pissed about. He would like to exact some revenge, but all he can see is the back end of the horse beating its hooves against ground in a vain effort to escape the dragonfear. Ambrosia could kill it from here. He doesn’t, he rather likes horses.

He turns his head, trying to find the armored one, but he can't seem to see him. The muscle the blade went through goes to his wing, and it feels droopy, unpleasant, so he closes both of them. He tenses up and leaps to mount a church tower. His claws dig through stonework, hunks of masonry falling to the ground, winding his way up it to get a good look at the surrounding area. He clutches close, moving his head from one side of the tower to the other. He can't find the handsome one. It's a shame - the sight of him leaping like that should have been quite impressive. Bro almost wanted him to see.

The pretty one, though, is alone, staring up at him with obvious fear. The appropriate response. Something golden is held in her arms, and he narrows his eyes, smelling magic.

He lets his tongue feed itself out between two teeth and taste the air. Definitely magic, but he decides its likely just her general aura. Egbert isn't anywhere to be seen, so, with his absence, she becomes his primary target.

He points his head down and loops around to her side of the tower, his long tail curling absently around its top, for stability. He's sure the long, deadly blade at the end adds a little height to the piddly fifty feet the humans managed to build. Honestly, they should thank him for breaking such garbage work.

He leaps down, lands light as a cat in front of the witch, and he circles her, once, letting fire build in his belly. It won't kill her, but it'll hurt, and it might get rid of whatever silly thing she's holding. Ooh, if it doesn't, he's taking that.

She doesn't move, looking up at him with an emotion that definitely should not be there - relief - and that's about when Ambrosia figures out something is wrong.

Now that he's on alert, he can feel something shift the spines at the base of his neck, and he whips his head around with teeth bared.

Holy fuck.

The crazy bastard’s on his back.

Now, obviously, Ambrosia has to kill him for this, but the gall of the man actually makes him stop for a second. The light of the fire in his throat outlines the battered silver armor James wears, and his ears prick as he shouts, “ _Now!_ ”

 _Now?_ Excuse him? He doesn't think so. He forgoes broiling the armored bastard that dared to mount him after he dodges the spout of flame, and instead rears back to leap into the air. Egbert'll fall anyway, and he knows that fool doesn't have magic that can save him from that. But whatever trap they've laid, Bro doesn't want any part of it.

The thing about flying, especially wounded, is that it takes a lot to actually get up in the air. A jump can do it, but you hang in the air as your wings swivel up again, and that's the part where the bastard takes advantage of something all dragons have only the most tenuous of agreements with - gravity. 

He's insane, Ambrosia realizes, as he sees iron out of the corner of his eye, and then the man’s arms are wrapped around his snout and his view has gone streaked and nonsense.

The weight of a fully armored human slamming into his face twists Ambrosia’s head to the side, and Bro muffles a yelp against iron armor as he completely loses track of where he is in the sky. His wings pinwheel as he tries to figure out where he is, but he ends up sideways, and then, with all the weight his size gives him, Ambrose hits the ground hard. He hits his head, too, and gasps a breath in through his nose.

He thinks he's knocked himself so damn silly he hears ringing. It's not really ringing, though, it's whirring. Like the rip of a sling through the air.

Egbert still has his arms wrapped around his snout, and Bro gets the singularly interesting feeling of not being able to open his mouth. How strong is he? Stronger than he thought, to be sure.

His jaw strains, muscles bulging enough under scale to brush against the man’s knees. He’s hurt, too, he can smell blood, but he isn’t hurt _enough_. Bro will tear him to ribbons when he gets his senses back.

Ambrosia shakes his head, trying to throw his metallic barnacle off, as he rolls to his feet. He's still unsteady. That's a hell of a crash he just took. He ate shit, he's willing to admit that. Pain is still emanating from the slices in his wing and side, and Bro's definitely cracked a scale in his shoulder. But he'll be fine.

Lalonde is swinging something. Like a length of chain in a gladiatorial arena, that long, golden thing is held in both hands, one spinning it at her side. Tired as he is - he thinks he might have a concussion, actually - it takes Bro a moment’s concentration to puzzle out what it is. That same magic-stinking chain, being hefted like a sling, too big in Roxy’s pretty little human paws and yet still almost weightless. He’s almost enraptured by it, which is when he figures out that this is a magic focused on Bro himself.

Then she throws it.

It seems to hang in the air, sparkling beauty. It whips itself open, thick gold chain and heavy plating, and as it extends, Bro realizes that they mean to trap him.

He tries to get out of the way, but for the first time in his life, his speed fails him. The chain curls in the air to whack against his breathbox, and with the twist of a heavy thing hitting a pole, the chain and metal plates wrap their way around his long neck. He hears the witch crow in jubilation.

It sticks to him when he twists his head, claws digging into the ground, when it should have slid over scales, if not to unwrap at least to adjust. This is more witch-magic. What it does escapes him.

What doesn’t is what it feels like. It's _hot_. It almost burns him, and Egbert drops from his snout as Bro wrenches his mouth open to roar, turning and twisting against the chain. She isn't strong enough to hold him, but she does it like it's nothing, not even budging against his fury. It makes him angrier.

The warm feeling spreads across his body, and he tries to get his claws under the collar’s plates, but they won't budge. He yells, a strange sound, with all the rumble taken out of it.

His world warps. Bro thrashes, the trees spearing up into the sky around him, the collar getting heavier and heavier, the grass becoming prickly and painful under his feet. The colors drain from the world and change to different, unfamiliar ones. He falls to his back, writhing and snarling, but the only sounds that come out are strange chokes and vowel-laden vocalizations. It doesn't sound like him, but it does, at the same time.

Ambrosia the Bloody, the Prince, the Great Dragon of Derse, opens human eyes and asks in human tongue,

“What have you done to me.”


	4. Shifter

The collar, flexible golden plating, is still tight around his slender throat, but the outer rim draped over his shoulders like a mantle. Even with gold chain wrapped thrice around his wrists, the Prince Ambrosia looks royal. Princely.

Roxanne _hates_ it.

Even trapped in a glamour, shaped like clay into a humanoid form, the Dragon of Derse walks silent. He keeps his chin raised proudly. Even though they’ve dragged him down, he’s as cocky as he is when he’s three stories tall. As she watches, he trips on a root, but recovers in less than a second. If she wasn’t paying so much attention to him, she’d have missed it.

She has to pay attention to him. She wishes she could do a little less, though, because it means she has to face him, and she doesn’t like facing him for reasons. Reasons is why.

Roxanne hears hoofbeats, and the both of them turn their heads to see James ride back into the clearing at an easy lope. Joplin has the remnants of foam gathered around her mouth, but she seems fine now. Good. James loves that fucking horse. If the Prince had gotten it killed, there’d be hell to pay - from her if not from him.

Well, more hell than he’s already about to pay, anyway.

“All figgered out?” she asks, untwisting the bindchain from itself to spit it in two. It’ll be more secure if they both have a hand on him. The Prince is a wily one, and there is no world in which he's not about to try and run away. She doesn't think he can get the collar off, or he would already. A guy like him doesn't stand for indignity. It's part of the fun of making him suffer it.

James catches the chain when she throws its end to him, clinking softly against his gauntlet. He wraps it twice around his hand. The Prince watches him like a hawk, or maybe just like a dragon. She's got a theory that their eye structure is similar.

It's just a theory because she doesn't know any dragons that want to let her see their eyes so closely.

“She's fine,” he answers, voice warm. A little taut from the pain of having a dragon face smashed up against him, but she's not great at healing magics, and she doesn't want to try out in the open with a prisoner like this one. “The fire’s contained, and most of the townspeople made it back after things died down.”

“Any congrats?” She says, with a bit of a smile.

“Mostly just asking when his execution will be,” James says, almost idle. They both look at the Prince, but he doesn't react. “Or asking what in hell we did - pardon the language.”

“You're pardoned.”

They keep going. The Prince walks exactly between them, each holding a chain that leads to his heavy mantle. He stops walking, once. Roxanne would Ike to just keep going and let him figure out that the chain negates any force he gives, but James stops, because he's a nice person.

Damn him.

The Prince, but James too. He doesn't have to be so nice.

“Are you alright?” James asks, like he doesn’t hate this man (dragon) as much as Roxanne does. Like this isn’t a land-burning monster that has ravaged cities as he pleases.

“... Yes,” lies the Prince, and Roxanne gently urges her horse onward.

“That’s enough of that. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you, darling,” James says, practical as ever, but Roxanne doesn’t want any of that either, because she knows he’s doing it to get a rise out of her, and _that doesn’t stop it from working_. 

A grin cuts the Prince’s features, but he goes walking again. Good of him.

That grin glints, too sharp, just like the horns and spikes on the shounders of the Prince that didn’t fully go away when he changed. Neither did his golden color, though it deepened a little, and the scales spattered liberally over his shoulders, cheekbones, and hips have his original brightness. His eyes still glow. His teeth are still sharp.

He has… a fucking massive penis.

Look. She was trying not to look at it, but he wouldn’t put on any clothes. It’s at least partially sheathed in some weird dragon-human hybrid thing, but she swears it’s twitching when she looks at it, and, come on, she just - it’s weird. It’s very weird.

She’s gotta look at it. And she kind of thinks James looked too, or at least thinks so enough to be comfortable teasing him about it later.

This is why she wanted to stop fucking looking at this stupid, sexy dragon man, because for all her troubles with his fire-breathing and village-destroying, she doesn’t actually hate him all that much at all, and she doesn’t like that.

She should, by all rights, despise this nasty, cruel beast. She should be happy to be walking him to his execution.

But if she did what she should, she wouldn’t be the witch that caught him in the first place, so she sneaks just one more peek at him. Then she looks up at James, and, in a terrible moment of clarity, they lock eyes.

That hypocrite.

 _What the fuck_ , she mouths.

_I know, dear._

_He wasn’t supposed to be hot._

_He was not._

_His dick is huge._

_I’m almost uncomfortable._

“Can you put on a fucking loincloth,” Roxanne snaps, turning to the Prince. He seems, somehow, even smugger, turning to regard her with only one eye.

“I don’t have the unnatural modesty humans do,” he says, rolling his shoulders so the mantle sparkles. It’s very pretty, and the light dances off his face in the most infuriating way. “It wouldn’t be for _my_ benefit.”

“And what is that supposed to mean,” she says, even as James tries to stop her. He should know by now that he can’t really stop her from doing anything, just like she doesn’t have the heart to rein him in half the time. 

Yes, she knows this is dumb and he’s baiting her, again, but again, _just because she knows how it’s happening doesn’t mean it’s not working_!

“Just that it’s more for your comfort than mine - though you do seem perfectly comfortable eyeing me up like the dead, cold meat you’re about to make me.” He bares his teeth in something that pretends to be a smile. Roxanne loses patience.

She sets her jaw and pulls the chain tight. “Look, Prince -”

“Ambrosia,” he interrupts, and takes the wind right out of her angry sails.

“... What?”

“Ambrosia,” he says again, and for the first time, he lifts amber eyes to hers, meeting her gaze on common ground. “Or Bro. I’d prefer it, but it’s pretty fuckin’ informal, so I get not using it.”

She doesn’t know what to say. How do you proceed from this? From your worst enemy telling you to call him by his fucking nickname?

(He sure doesn’t feel like a worst enemy right now.)

Those are dangerous thoughts, so she puts them to the side to be reexamined later. Instead, Roxanne just yanks the chain. But it doesn’t really get her what she wants, and the little breath that the Prince - _Bro_ makes, his head twisted to the side by the sharp pull, is heavenly. James wraps the chain twice more around his gauntleted hand, and then he’s pulled tight between them, unable to move one way or the other. The only way for him is forward. And forward he goes, hands bound before him with the same chain that wraps his throat and shoulders. 

He doesn’t have a tail to wag, not in this form, but his hips are swaying in the smug half-cocked way he’s done anything, and… well, Roxanne’s almost a fan of it.

She looks at James, one more time, and decides they need to talk.


End file.
